Life Lessons I Learned from Middle School

1. Middle school isn't as awkward as everyone says it is. 

This is a tricky one because middle school definitely is awkward. You're growing. You're not mature yet by any means, but you still don't want to be treated like a child, despite the fact that you 100% are a child. People are going through puberty. All of those things are very awkward, but you have to remember: everyone is going through the exact same awkwardness (except for me, but I'll get to that later). Yes, your expander that gives you a lisp, bangs, and clothes that don't fit right because your body is changing are all very awkward, but everyone else has the exact same problems! Because everyone is all dealing with the same things, no one notices anyone else's awkwardness. It really works out kind of perfectly... unless you're me.

2. "Body changes" are not the only awkward thing in middle school.

This isn't second semester of 8th grade...
This is the END of middle school,
and I was still this weird...

I did not "become a woman" until I was 16 years old, the summer after my sophomore year in high school, so when all of my middle school friends were dealing with their body changing, dealing with "aunt flo," and buying bras for the first time. I wasn't. I wore a 32AAA bra in the 7th grade because I didn't have any boobs, but I needed to wear something because I had to change in the locker room with everyone for PE. Needless to say, I got made fun of for my "bra. (honestly, I don't even think you could call it a bra)." I had to shop at Limited Too until halfway through freshman year because my body hadn't grown enough for me to fit into teenager clothes, so while all my friends started shopping at Hollister, Aeropostale, and American Eagle, I was stuck searching Limited Too for clothes without sequins on them. Then a few years later, having to deal with awkward body changes without the comfort of "everybody's going through it too." No they weren't. They had already "been there done that." What I'm saying here is, y'know what's more awkward than all the adolescent changes that everyone goes through in middle school? Not going through those adolescent changes

3. Really, don't do drugs.

Because we don't have a guidance counselor to come visit every week in middle school, red ribbon week was a huge deal. There was only one week devoted to not doing drugs, so we had to go ALL OUT. There was a huge assembly to kick off the week, and every class, the teachers had to give us a fact about drugs. The freakiest thing was on Wednesday we had "dead day." Where names were drawn and the students who were drawn got their faces painted white and were told they were "dead." This represented statistically, how many deaths there are related to drugs. The paper explained how you died, and you weren't allowed to talk all day. Seriously, don't do drugs: they could kill you.

4. Sometimes you have to let people make their own mistakes.

I was a cheerleader in 8th grade, and I was a flyer. There was another girl who really wanted to be a flyer, but she was obviously not "flyer sized." I tried to reason with her in the nicest way possible (without telling her that she was simply too big), saying how she hasn't been tried with proper flyer technique, my bases aren't used to her as a flyer, etc. However, she would not take no for an answer. One game, she took my spot and was a flyer. They could not hold her up and dropped her multiple times. She realized that she couldn't be a flyer. Not everyone is willing to simply accept someone else's reason or experience, and you sometimes have to let people drop a girl in order to help her learn. 

5. Really this last point is just for uniformity...

For some reason, I don't have as many middle school memories as high school and elementary school. Middle school is kind of a modge podge of mismatched memories, and I was unable to come up with 5 real lessons from middle school. Honestly, number 2 doesn't reallly say much, so I barely came up with 4 lessons. Nevertheless, I wanted my "Life Lessons I Learned from School" posts to be uniform, so this point is here.